Re: please improve the documentation for install --compare (-C)

[Kamil Dudka]

Hi Florian,

On Thu September 3 2009 12:36:13 Florian Schlichting wrote:
> Hi,
>
> the -C (or --compare) option is currently not mentioned in the info
> documentation, and in man page it reads:
>
>     compare each pair of source and destination files, and
>     in some cases, do not modify the destination at all

thanks for pointing this out! As for the missing info documentation, it's ugly 
bug. A hunk of doc/coreutils.texi was misplaced somehow (lack of caffeine, who 
knows...). The attached patch fixes it.

> That's not very specific, making -C effectively unuseable. I found a
> nice description of what it does on this list, written by Kamil Dudka
> (http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-coreutils/2009-01/msg00122.html):
>
>     With this option install checks an existing destination file and if it
>     is not different (by content, owner, group and mode) from source, the
>     file is not installed. Preserving destination's original mtime can
>     significantly decrease time of building when a system library is
>     reinstalled but the header files are not changed at all.
>
> IMHO this is adequate for the info documentation. For the shorter
> manpage, the description could be changed to read:
>
>     compare each pair of source and destination files, and
>     if identical (by content, ownership and mode), do not
>     copy to preserve mtime

As for wording/reviewing the documentation text, we need to ask someone else. 
My English is not good enough to write documentation...

Kamil

0001-install-C-fix-bug-in-the-texi-documentation.patch
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